Indonesian workers jailed for 30 months in KL
Agencies, Jakarta
A Malaysian court sentenced on Monday four Indonesian migrant workers to 30 months each for their involvement in a violent protest over drug testing in the Nilai industrial estate in Negeri Sembilan state on Jan. 17.
Bernama quoted the court as saying that Sedarmin Pinem, 22, Abdul Rahman Kassim, 24, Kaswandi Kurdi, 26, and Tambar Ukur Ginting, 25, all workers in a textile company, were proven guilty of attacks on a number of state-owned vehicles, a crime which carries a maximum jail term of five years.
The news agency reported that the four defendants pleaded guilty.
The four were part of a group of 15 Indonesians arrested and brought to justice following the rioting in Nilai.
Another stampede took place three days after the Nilai incident, when some Indonesian 70 construction workers ran amok at Cyberjaya south of Kuala Lumpur.
Tension has been escalating between the two neighboring countries after Malaysia sought the deportation of some 450,000 Indonesian workers following the incidents.
To ease the strained relations, President Megawati Soekarnoputri sent Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra for a talk with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad over the weekend.
A group of six House of Representatives legislators led by Deputy Speaker Muhaimin Iskandar left on Monday for Malaysia, to meet with members of the Malaysian parliament over the mass deportation issue.
Yusril said after a 10-minute meeting with Mahathir that Malaysia would only deport illegal Indonesian workers and would allow legal ones to stay in the country.
Apparently confirming Yusril's statement, a Malaysian official said on Monday his government remained undecided about a plan to include legal migrant workers on the list of deportees.
"For the moment, the illegal (Indonesian) workers will be sent home. The legal workers' (matter) is not yet decided... the policy on the whole is to reduce migrant workers from Indonesia," the Malaysian Embassy's consul for immigration and labor affairs, Mohamad Hamdi, told The Jakarta Post over the phone on Monday.
Currently, there are approximately 900,000 Indonesian workers registered in the country, but both the Malaysian and Indonesian governments said that Indonesians constituted some 560,000 of 769,000 legal foreign workers in Malaysia.
Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirayuda will lead an Indonesian delegation for talks with his Malaysian counterpart Hamid Albar in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 18. Shortly thereafter, Minister for Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea will depart for Malaysia to meet his counterpart for the same purpose.